I just watched Moonrise Kingdom. I didn’t like it. I clearly don’t understand what I’m supposed to be seeing. It’s gotten such great reviews and made many ‘best movie of the year’ nominations. It was pretty but there was no plot to speak of. The dialog was awful. It was stilted and didn’t drive the ‘plot’ forward.
As soon as the movie started I thought to myself it had the feel of Life Aquatic -not knowing it was by the same director. I also strongly disliked that movie.
So can someone tell me what’s so great these types of movies. I can see it as a short, but 2 hours seemed to stretch the content a bit too far.
Of course I know that ‘different people like different things’, but what I’m asking for is the aspects of his movies that people enjoy. They just don’t seem to fit into the traditional conventions and conceits that successful movies are usually required to follow.
That pretty much sums it up for me. Moonrise Kingdom is my favorite movie of 2012. I can’t say why in an articulate manner, I just thought it was sweet and funny and endearing and wonderful with a great look and great music. Wes hates being called “quirky” but that’s one of things I love about him and I can’t think of a better word. It and other WA favorites (for me, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Royal Tenanbaums) aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s fine. No movie is.
laugh I can’t speak for anybody else, including the 94% of critics who liked it on Rotten Tomatoes (though they can’t all be miserable), but that doesn’t apply to me. I’m in a pretty golden era of my life (knock on wood). I have a husband I love of 31 years who amazingly still loves me, a job I like, live in a city I love, have no debts, no family problems, no health problems, no Pittable/MPSIMable worries of any kind, see a lot of movies, listen to a lot of music, and I’m very very thankful and happy.
Beyond pointing that out, I’m not going to take the bait. Like it/him/them, don’t like it/him/them, it makes no difference to the world at large. Find something you do love and enjoy yourself.
…yeah… I think this is a case of “It’s the not the story I wanted, so there was no story.”
Wes Anderson movies are nearly all about the differences between the world of a child and the life of an adult–and usually the disappoint all humans experience when those things must confront each other.
Anderson’s films are strongly stylized (if you noticed, a very large percentage of the shots in Moonrise Kingdom had a shot of a person in the center of the screen and looking directly at you; other people in the shot were arranged symmetrically behind the main person). It is not meant to show real people doing realistic things. You have to move beyond realism to the art in order to understand them.
Moonrise is a dreamlike fantasy of a pair of young teenage outsiders. It’s not what would conventionally be called a comedy (especially these days); the humor is in the deadpan reaction of the characters to the situation. The characters behave in a dreamlike way, and the humor comes from their deadpan reactions to strange situations.
It’s not conventionally plot-driven, nor are the characters conventional. Anderson creates a whole different world, with only slight connection to the real world. You enter his dream and take it for what it is – a self-contained alternate reality.
I’d be more specific. He writes about the differences between an adult’s imagination of the world of a child, and the world of a middle-aged rich white person full of ennui. Darjeeling Limited took it one step further, suggesting that what spoiled rich white guys full of ennui really need is a trip to an exotic location, a location that exists mostly to provide them with the wisdom they need. Fantastic Mr. Fox took it one step further in a different way, by taking a classic and delightful children’s tale and turning it into a depressed middle-aged white-guy’s navel-gazing experience. Mortgages are hard! Wives are shrews! Waah!
A key feature in Wes Anderson movies is that they are overtly staged. What I mean by that is the director clearly is creating a unique world and his actors are operating within the rules of that world. In some of his films the staging is explicit: in Rushmore he uses curtains to change scenes and in the Royal Tenenbaums there is a narrator reading from a book with illustratons. All of this combines to create the film’s own reality.
You can see this very clearly in the beginning of Moonrise Kingdom when he is showing you the house as a cutaway, it very much feels like you are looking at a set or a dollhouse, not a real house.
I really like Wes Anderson movies, I think that he is one of the few people out there making funny movies that are at all worth watching, but to enjoy them you have to accept the reality he is creating from the first scene and just enjoy the ride.
I don’t get it either. I’ve been encouraging people I know to see it for months, and I’ve never had any trouble summing up what it’s about: on a small island off the coast of New England, two lonely kids who feel like outsiders in their own families run away together, and their families begin looking for them, learning more about the kids and about themselves in the process.
Now, I don’t think that really illustrates what I love about it, but it’s a fairly straightforward movie in terms of story.
Basically, I think the op, like many others, feels most comfortable watching films that are set in the fairly typical Hollywood reality and need the standard tropes and cues to ellicit certain emotional responses for them to like a movie.
Wes Anderson presents his artistic vision. He crafts a story using his own (plus those he has borrowed from the masters visual/ sound tools. He has a very distinct style like so many other artists of all mediums. Some like this style, others don’t.
Not a huge fan of Wes Anderson, but I really like Moonrise Kingdom.
Hard to nail down the reason, but it seemed almost like someone was telling me a story of their youth - with many funny embellishments that may or may not be true - but still a compelling story.
We all do this in our own way - crazy neighborhood lady from your youth is suddenly not only crazy but has a huge mole on her nose and wears bizarre hats (when in reality, she might have had a freckle on her cheek and wore a normal straw hat when working in the garden).
So this film was chock full of exaggerated background characters - but the the crux of the story - running away with your little girlfriend and having people search for you is still there; perhaps just a wee bit embellished here and there after having told the story 100 times over the years.
I liked the film and felt like I was a kid again - and the cast of characters and ensuing events was exactly the way a kid would have seen this unfold.
My favorite movies include City of Lost Children and Brazil. I think it’s fair to say I’m not especially interested in “typical Hollywood reality.” And I’ve hated each WA movie I’ve seen more than the last.
I think he’s like Judd Apatow. They both make movies about pitiful man-children. One such movie is fine, because the characters are fascinating terrible freaks. But after awhile the schtick gets old.
This is exactly what I’ve never been able to do with his films. I’ve seen most of them, and pretty strongly disliked them. Until Moonrise. I hated the first 20 minutes or so, then gradually “gave in” to it, and ended up loving it. Watched it again the next day, and still can’t quite figure what made it connect for me.
BTW and IMO: Bruce Willis’ best performance since Twelve Monkeys.
I wasn’t a big fan of Anderson’s movies before, but Moonrise touched me in a way I didn’t expect. At its heart, it’s a sweet story about two misfit kids who find each other. It’s one of the few movies I’ve gone back to see in the theater, and I just bought the DVD and watched it again over the weekend.
No, it isn’t this. I actually like offbeat quirky movies. I specifically dislike like “Hollywood” movies. I don’t like being spoon fed movie clues. I like tragedy, and so on.
Also to address madmonk28’s points, I loved the overly staged aspect of the show. It was visually beautiful.
Regarding the story/ plot. Yes I know the plot. But it was a plot in as much as Forrest Gump had a plot. I could rattle off the chain of events but it was written in a way that didn’t create any tension. Nothing to make me want to hang around for the next scene.
The main characters themselves barely seemed to have any interest in each other. They seemed to have a ‘sure, whatever’ attitude about everything they did.
I’m glad he he found his market. And I’m glad some enjoy his stuff but it baffles me.
The Darjeeling Limited had some of the most obnoxious characters to ever grace the screen, I absolutely hate the fact I had to spent two hours with them.
visual/ sound tools. He has a very distinct style like so many other artists of all mediums. Some like this style, others don’t.